George Clooney, our nation’s elegantly rumpled, dapper conscience, has now set his sights on producing and possibly directing a film concerning the 2008 bailout that briefly united the country, like a modern-day Hands Across America except with yelling. Based on the 2009 Washington Post article “The $700 Billion Man,” the untitled film (which will probably avoid that title, lest it be confused for an adjusted-for-inflation Six Million Dollar Man adaptation) will concern Neel Kashkari, the former Goldman Sachs VP who helped engineer the Troubled Asset Relief Program, then, faced with the relentless questioning of Congress and the general hostility of a nation, left Washington D.C. for a small cabin in the woods, where he could be alone with his hurt feelings. Of course, almost immediately after that article was published, it was revealed that Kashkari had gone right back to bond trading, and he soon began writing op-eds that espoused similarly bold, unpopular opinions like, for example, calling on elderly people to allow the government to cut their entitlements. He’s a fearless, Jack London-esque pioneer-type, that Kashkari, but something tells us Clooney may see him a little bit more cynically.
Join the discussion...